Obviously, many people use Microsoft products, but not productively. You can't use them productively, the latency on their tools is so extreme, it's a fluke if you can get anything approaching “real-time”. Even if we ignored that major issue, the constant feature break, confusing circular portals, broken licensing, predatory licensing, lack of support, and everything else put together, you can't be a professional and a Microsoft user. At best, and I'm being generous, you could be an unwilling fraud posing as a professional, but that's as far as I'll go.

Not to mention, 85%+ of the computers on earth run a Linux / Unix variant. The vast majority of what you use or do, has to be done on Linux or Unix, which really poses the question, why does anyone hold out to be part of the 15%? If Microsoft didn't have a monopoly on preinstalls, I don't think they'd have any desktop share.

It's not the year of Linux on the desktop, that's been a meme for 20+ years. Providing the computer you buy comes preinstalled with Windows 11, Linux isn't going to become the new desktop king, but it already has every other market, so do we care?

Excel is a great example of a terrible and broken program. Contrast Excel against LibreOffice Calc, and it's striking the quality difference, and usability difference. Don't waste time learning Excel, learn Calc, and you'll be fine, then just tell everyone they have to use ODS, and you're off to the races.

If the feature count means 90% of the features are rushed, broken, nonsense, what use is it?

No it's not, I can't think of a tool that is good enough, from Microsoft, in 2025, that I would feel confident in trusting from a security, stability or usable prospective. Their best tools might get a tarnished aluminum foil award, and that would be a stretch.

Time and time again, three things keep constantly get proven:

1. Windows is a joke operating system for some weird end-game.
2. Microsoft's tools aren't meant for professional use.
3. Microsoft doesn't care, and isn't accountable to anyone.

I don't think Windows 11 has ever worked, I've faced unusual problems with it since the release, continuously. Add on to that constant reports of major degradation / feature breaks, and what are we left to assume? If something in Windows breaks, Microsoft will rarely admit it, throw blame like it's a contest, and then blame the user base, and everyone else. I've made this claim before, in multi-forms, and here again, the issue started in July, and it's November before they take any accountability?

When I say (paraphrased): “Professionals don't use Windows.”, this is why, you can't use it. It's either broken, breaking, frozen, stalled, disabled, unusable, or moving between one of those states. When you run into an issue, have you tried to get support? The support is so poor, that it's again some weird end-game to prove something, but what? The support isn't less than ideal, it's almost inspiring in its incompetence.

What was point 2? Have you tried using MS Office? I have a constant problem where my key buffer is delayed by seconds. This means I press “A”, it will take 1+ seconds to show up. I have demoed this issue to our CSM, and “support” only to be told it's my system. When I pushed back, and they asked for reports about my internet stability, front door server locations, and other points. I ran their support tooling, all the reports came back with I green star? They were excellent, and what did Microsoft do? Blame my system. In that email thread, on that message, they said (paraphrased): “Just use LibreOffice.”, what? Microsoft can't even keep up the lies, they admit their offerings are sub-par.

I'll wrap it up, I could go on about other tools, other platforms, portals, management, support, it's all crap.

Exactly, that's why it's fine; however, it's grossly inappropriate, it may be logically correct, but many people won't be able to understand what it really says.

I don't think, outside a minimal subset of world-class specialists, could any doctor meaningfully define or recognize autism as a core or related core condition. Why do I say that?

I have a condition generally referred to as Chronic Neuropathic Pain Disorder, or “Chronic Pain”. I have 15 doctors / specialists, ranging from my GP (family doctor), to a world recognized expert in pain diagnosis and treatment (Dr James). If we exclude Dr James, and you talk to the other 14 doctors / specialists, none of them will agree on what I have, how to treat it, or how to define it. They can't agree on the cause, or agree on what imaging shows and how that relates to my pain. If you then take Dr James, he'll disagree in some form with all of them, agree with some points, and exclude others. He'll end up at a different point, where he'll agree I have CNPD, and tell me to use Cannabis (I'm grossly simplifying).

In the same context, you ask 99% of doctors to define autism, or diagnosis it, and you'll have the problem. This confusion is why I said you can't really define it, or agree what it is. That's why when people make a statement like “Vaccines can't be shown to not cause autism.”, okay, “fine”, that's “true” because it's entirely wrong. We can show the link between them is almost non-existent, to the point only the intentionally dishonest would assert one.

We don't know that vaccines don't cause autism, we heavily suspect they don't. You can't prove a negative, in science, you can only show that we have never been able to confirm they can. Let's be clear, we have an insane amount of research and evidence to defend the claim vaccines don't cause autism, but we can't conclusively and absolutely prove they don't. We don't even know what “autism” really is as a stable definition, by evidence it's swung, from someone completely functionally absolutely socially retarded, to people who would rather not make eye contact.

That's why the first part of the statement is “fine” because it's not completely false, and that's important. You can make any manner of stupid overreaching, not entirely false, statements, without making a truthful statement. That's what they've done, and if you can notice that, there's no harm. That harm comes from the people who will confuse "not entirely false" with right, and that's a problem.

100%, which is why the statement doesn't really mean anything, until you hit that stupid second part.

Yes, exactly, but your statement is “fine”, it's not false, and it's pointless to make, but it's not a lie. Should that be on the CDC website, no, not at all, but again, it's not a lie so it falls back to “fine”. Keep in mind, “fine” does not mean a great reference point of truth.

That statement is fine, we don't know what causes autism, and frankly defining it is almost a joke, since it is a voluntary diagnosis for the most part. However, you could make the same style statement about almost anything, and it wouldn't be entirely wrong.

It's an idiotic statement, but it's not entirely wrong. Not being wrong, is the not same as being right, and that's the important factor. People will read the autism statement and think the government is finally endorsing the “reality” that vaccine cause autism when they're not. Years ago, during COVID-19, I made a joke that I didn't want to get the COVID-19 vaccine because I didn't want double autism. I'm formally diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, and everyone knew I was joking. My wife, who's a nurse, told one of her clients, who said (paraphrased): “Oh, that's a good point!”, and that woman was serious.

Where the statement becomes very problematic is the next part:

What studies? Link the studies, the complete studies because making stupid statements is one thing, but making a falsifiable statement is a violation of public trust. I'm not suggesting that we carefully select some studies, I'm suggesting to post all of them, provide the evidence, if you don't have any, then remove the tail end of the quote. Should the government post careless statements, no, but if you're going to use reverse logic, then make sure you don't provide a falsifiable statement that can be checked.

Quills are good, fountain pens, with various nibs, well pens, fluted pens, and items like that. Now that might seem weird, so why? Simple, to show kids how to write properly, which once you understand you can move to ballpoints, or ink rollers, or gels. The big problem is that we teach kids to write with terrible writing instruments, that don't force proper writing habits, and then, we get them started on bad paper, with bad penmanship. How many kids do you know, or adults, who can comfortable hold a pen for long writing periods? How many do you know, who know how to hold or angle a pen? We were taught poorly, from everyone, not just schools or teachers.

I'll be more generic, I don't mind what you believe or follow, no delusional state should be preferenced, or, given special protection. All religious faith is just a mental illness, ranging from very mild, through to extreme. Even if your flavour of religious faith turned out to be true, it's still a mental illness, since you have to believe in something outside of reality.

That leads into the discussion regarding how do you tell when something is hate speech vs free speech? Which is something Canada doesn't do well. You can hear legal takes that “hate speech” is a specific bar to clear / trigger, but it's not really. Hate speech is so broadly considered to be anything that anyone might, be accident, take offence to, even through misunderstanding.

Yep, and for the record that point regards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., which makes it a crime, to be critical, to any degree, of Islam, regardless if your points are based on fact. Simply if a person of Islamic faith could take offence, accidentally, and intentional through misrepresentation, you violate Motion 103. We see governments taking the knee constantly for Islamic nonsense, there was a BC minister kicked out of office because some Muslims disagreed with her, to spite her making a factual statement, that didn't even involve them. https://desibuzzbc.com/bc-mini...

I'm all for freedom of expression and speech, but it has to go both ways, I just as much right to draw the prophet, as you do, to call me all manner of names, even if they're offensive. Hell, draw me sucking off the prophet for all I care.

How is Canada Free? We don't have freedom of speech, we don't even have freedom of expression, any more.

Canadian commonly known restrictions:
Speech / expression control.
Censorship
Restricted right to protest
Controlled view points
Government filtering of media
Government filtering of the internet.
Government control of the news.
Forced acceptance and respect of Islam.
Forced acceptance and respect of the French language.
and more...

How are we free? Hell, there is a NDP woman who wants to make denial of Residential Schools a crime, and this year someone got convicted of Holocaust Denial. We're not free, even accidentally, who is compiling that list?